


Staggering (under the weight of all the truths I'm not telling)

by sylviarachel



Series: It Gets Better (Check Please! edition) [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alicia Zimmermann is a badass, Anxiety Disorder, Bitty is a bit of a Stepford Smiler, Boys Kissing, Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, M/M, Panic Attacks, References to suicidal ideation, Running away from home, conspiracy of hockey moms, hockey players in love, questionable rendering of how people from Georgia talk, references to homophobic bullying, speaking French in front of unilingual Anglophones is rude (I'm looking at you Bad Bob)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 20:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8071975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: It's not that Eric doesn't know how to keep secrets, doesn't know how to tell lies. It's just that this secret, these lies, are slowly wearing him down.Thanks to the awesome ngoziu for making sweet handsome troubled hockey sons for us to play with!





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo my publisher wants these page proofs back by tomorrow? And I have work to do? And laundry and housework and stuff? But instead … 
> 
> This was supposed to be a quick little thing about Bitty's Secret Boyfriend Feels, and instead turned into, like, 10K words of IDEK what. Then the first 5K got eaten by MS OneDrive, and when I rewrote it, it wasn't quite the same. (And shorter, which, LBR, is probably a good thing.) I'm not 100% sure it's actually done, but there are UPDATES COMING!!!!!! :D :D so I'm posting it before it's totally jossed by said updates XD.
> 
> In my headcanon, Bitty may or may not have undiagnosed anxiety and/or depression but in any case has definitely had panic attacks before, and is almost as bad as Jack at acknowledging and expressing "negative" feelings where other people can see him. YMMV.
> 
>  ~~Also: there is waaaay too much French in this and I'm sure it's annoying to only have the translation at the ends. If anyone knows the HTML code for that cool thing where you hover over the French text and English appears, lmk in comments and I'll make it happen!~~ Thanks to [hidden_hermione](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hidden_hermione/pseuds/hidden_hermione) for teaching me how to code hovertext translations! (For mobile readers, translations remain in the notes at the end.)

It’s not that Eric doesn’t know how to lie.

Eric Richard Bittle has told _plenty_ of lies in his life, thank you very much.

_No ma’am, Auntie Joy, I ain’t really got time for dating, what with hockey and schoolwork._

_Sorry, Coach, I got no idea how all that red paint got all over my schoolbooks_.

And it’s not that he doesn’t _want_ to lie—well, it _is_ , but he understands the necessity. As he said to Jack months ago, this isn’t keeping a Winter Screw date secret; this is Jack’s NHL career, and it’s _important_ , and Jack has been through hell and back to get where he is, and Eric would cut off his own arm with a butter knife rather than do anything to mess that up for him.

And it’s not that he doesn’t love Jack. Loving Jack, in fact, is maybe the easiest thing he’s ever done. Because once you get past the Hockey RobotTM façade that helps him manage his shyness and his awkwardness and his constant anxiety about never being good enough, Jack Zimmermann is sweet and considerate and generous and funny; and he takes boyfriending as seriously as he takes hockey, which … well, it’s a lot, is what it is. In the best possible way, it’s a lot.

Eric’s in love with Jack Zimmermann, and Jack, he’s made very sure Eric knows, is in love with him, and that’s … well, that’s kind of the problem.

Now, if Eric could somehow have known, this time last year, that by December of his junior year he’d be several months into _dating Jack Zimmermann_ , he’d have been over the moon. Except that, while there’s a lot (a _lot_ ) about dating Jack that’s straight-up _wonderful_ , there’s also a lot that isn’t.

There’s Ransom and Holster, who are constantly trying to set him up with this guy or that guy that they’re sure he would hit it off with (“and by ‘hit it off’, we mean ‘bang’”). It’s not that they won’t respect his “no”—Eric might not want to go on dates with some of these guys even if he _didn’t_ have a boyfriend, after all, and Holster and Ransom may be loud and obnoxious and over-enthusiastic, but they do understand the concept of consent. It’s that he knows they would knock it off entirely if he said “I’m seeing someone”, and he knows they’d feel terrible if they knew they were kinda-sorta encouraging him to cheat, and they’re the _captains_ —he knows they feel responsible for everyone on the team, just as much as Jack did when he was captain, even if they express it very, _very_ differently—and after sharing so much of himself with them and the rest of his Hausmates last year, it feels strange and wrong to be lying to them now.

There’s adorable Chowder and his adorable girlfriend, who are never anything but sweet to Eric and are always offering to help in the kitchen, and the way looking at them being adorable together used to make Eric smile but somehow, more and more often, has started making his stomach ache with all the truths he’s not telling.

There’s Dex and Nursey, who seem to have volunteered themselves (or been voluntold?) as some kind of Bitty Patrol, or at least every time he turns around at a kegster or a party or a team breakfast on the road, there they are, low-key bickering as usual but paying just a little bit too much attention to Eric for the bickering to look entirely real.

There’s the tadpoles, wide-eyed at the idea that they’re playing with guys who played with Jack Zimmermann, and particularly poor Tango with his constant questions every so often coming uncomfortably close to the truth—Eric wants them to feel safe on the team, obviously, wants them to feel comfortable coming to him with their problems, like the Frogs before them, but how can they when he’s keeping this massive secret from the rest of the team?

And of course there’s Lardo, who says very little but notices a _lot_ , and who’s started looking at him in an unsettlingly serious way. After Jack, Lardo is probably Eric’s best friend, and he’s pretty sure she knows he’s hiding something. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly anxious, he starts to think maybe she’s even guessed _what_ he’s hiding.

There’s so much he wants to say—to Lardo, to his mama, to the boys—not, like, _deets_ (because Eric is a gentleman, excuse _you_ , Adam Birkholtz), but he wants to tell them he’s seeing someone, wants to be able to talk about his sweet, adorable, kind and handsome boyfriend, to gush about the kitchen in Jack’s apartment and complain-brag about the ridiculous gadgets Jack insists on buying him for it; wants to be able to say the things that he could say—although, well, maybe not to his mama—if he were dating almost literally anyone else. He wants to tell them how happy he is.

Except, increasingly and in more and more ways, he’s not.

That, of course, is something he _really_ can’t tell anyone. That’s sort of unofficially his job on the team, after all: he bakes pies, he dispenses fresh-baked cookies and coffee and good cheer, he climbs in and out of hockey bags for luck and lets the boys chirp him for being so tiny (even though the truth is that he’s a normal size and they’re mostly all giants), he makes sure everyone’s eating properly and nobody’s freaking out too hard about any of their classes. He’s officially in charge of the Haus kitchen and the Haus chore wheel, and unofficially in charge of making sure the Haus is a safe space for any and all members of the team.

Because, sure, Jack’s coaching has helped him a _lot_ , but Eric knows perfectly well that he needs to earn his place on the team in other ways besides hockey. He has _friends_ here, people who’ve got his back and count on him to have theirs, and he’s not about to throw that away by turning into a Debbie Downer.

It’s hard, though; it’s the hardest acting job he’s ever had to pull off, even including his ultimately futile attempts to bro himself up to acceptable standards in junior high school so the football guys would leave him alone. He has to be careful not to look too happy about going to visit Jack, or too sad about leaving; he has to police himself constantly for a whole new set of suspicious behaviours (reacting too much, or the wrong way, when they’re watching the Falcs play on TV and Jack takes a hard check; talking too much about Jack, or too little about Shitty; using Jack’s nicknames for his teammates like he knows them, which he doesn’t but feels like he does because Jack talks so much about them; letting on that he visits Jack a lot more often than he’s admitted to, or that he’s also in regular contact with both of Jack’s parents, or that his feelings about Kent Parson are a lot more personal than they have any right to be).

It’s hard to talk about NHL hockey without talking too much about Jack; it’s hard to talk about dating, hookups, or relationships without mentioning he’s seeing someone, which would unleash a torrent of demands for deets; it’s hard to talk about baking without thinking of baking with Jack, or about music, because literally every song Eric hears reminds him of Jack or something to do with Jack, or about classes, because he and Jack talk about Eric’s classes all the time and Jack insists on helping him with his French homework—

And so, little by little, Eric just … stops talking.

And the boys may be a bunch of oblivious hockey bros, but even they aren’t _that_ oblivious. He hears them talking (in the living room, when they don’t think he can hear them from the kitchen; in the reading room, when he’s being so quiet they don’t realize he’s home; on the roadie bus when they think he’s asleep) and he knows he’s worrying them and he loves them for caring about him but he wishes they would just _stop_.

*

Eric goes to Madison for the Christmas break, and does as little talking as possible. He spends a lot of time in the kitchen, and answers the usual questions over and over ( _Still playing ice hockey up at that Yankee school? No girlfriend yet, huh? Holding out for a Georgia Peach? American Studies? What’re ya gonna do with that, son?_ ) from the usual parade of Bittle and Phelps relatives, and Skypes Jack every night with earbuds in, talking quietly, just in case Mama or Coach happens to be passing by his bedroom door.

“Is everything okay at school, Dicky?” Mama asks him. “I don’t wanna pry, honey, I know you’re practically grown up and you can handle yourself, but you seem a little—”

“Everything’s fine, Mama,” Eric says, before she can go any further, because he _will_ start to cry if she does. “Junior year’s just a lot, you know?”

She hugs him, hard, and he manages not to cry until after she and Coach have gone to bed.

*

Sometimes Eric gets _so angry_ , not at Jack, but at this thing Jack loves so much that often just doesn’t seem to love him back. Sometimes he watches You Can Play videos on his laptop and tries to find them encouraging, but really they just make him more miserable because, sure, the Oilers have Pride tape on their sticks, and, sure, the captains of the Canucks and the Leafs have said in interviews that their teams would have no problem with an out gay player, and, sure, Patrick Burke says he thinks the league is ready for an out player and wouldn’t it be great if a whole bunch of guys came out at once?—but yet here they still are. If _he_ were going to be an NHL player, maybe he could rant about it to his teammates without their being suspicious that he’s so passionate about homophobic pro hockey culture, but as it is, there’s nobody he can say any of this stuff to.

 _You could talk to Jack_ , the more optimistic part of his brain suggests. But no, he can’t: Jack has enough to worry about, Jack already feels guilty enough about making Eric hide their relationship, Jack is under enough stress what with trying to make a success of his rookie year and prove all those asshole sports commentators wrong, and opposing players going after him because they think he’s coasting on Bad Bob’s reputation, and all the same rumors about alcohol abuse and cocaine and puck bunnies that have been following him around since Juniors.

Jack absolutely does. not. need. Eric’s issues. He needs Eric to be confident and supportive and cheerful and encouraging, and, dammit, that is exactly what Eric is going to be.

*

It’s on a weekend in February that it finally all goes to hell. Valentine’s Day weekend, to be precise, because of course it is. Jack’s got a game, and he’s sent Eric a ticket, and Eric’s going to stay for the weekend, and Eric doesn’t care about stupid over-commercialized heteronormative bullshit holidays (thank you, Shitty), of course, except … this is his first one with Jack (and, let’s be real, his first one in an actual relationship), so he actually kind of does.

Since going to Providence to hang out with Jack (which everyone knows he sometimes does, because they’re _friends_ ) _on Valentine’s Day_ is a little bit too suspicious even for a bunch of oblivious hockey bros, Eric evolves an alternative story. And he’s sure he’s gotten away with it—his weekend playing Greater Boston Area tour guide for his cousin Ashley (who’s applied to the premed programs at Tufts and Boston U) and her mom, which isn’t even a complete lie because he spent a weekend doing exactly that _last_ February—until, pacing back and forth along the Amtrak platform while waiting for his train to Providence, he almost runs smack into Lardo.

“‘Sup, Bits,” she says. She doesn’t say anything else, but Eric can read her slightly arched left eyebrow as fully equivalent to a _Bitty!!!! The actual literal fuck do you think you’re doing here, ya li’l fucker???_ from Shitty.

And all of a sudden, it’s just. too. much. Words pile up behind his pressed-together lips: _Tango was right, I_ am _secretly dating someone famous, and it’s Jack, and I love him and he loves me and he’s the absolute best boyfriend and I’m so, so happy, except keeping it a secret is killing me, it’s so much worse than I thought it would be, I thought I’d be fine with it but it’s so, so hard and I hate it but I can’t tell anyone, I can’t mess this up for Jack when he’s finally where he’s supposed to be and he likes his team and he’s doing well and I love him SO MUCH but I hate that I can’t tell anyone and I hate lying to all of y’all, you’re my family and it feels so wrong—_

Lardo’s still standing there looking up at him, not talking, and finally the pressure of all those words explodes into ugly, noisy, humiliating sobbing.

“Jesus,” says Lardo, quietly. Then her arms are tight around him and she’s pulling his head down onto her strong little shoulder and talking into his ear: “You’re okay, Bits. It’s all gonna be okay. I got your back.”

Eric’s still crying when his train pulls in.

*

He avoids conversation with the grandmotherly-looking lady who sits down next to him by pretending to be asleep—but not before the incessant buzzing of his phone (texts from Lardo that he just _can’t_ with right now) prompts him to turn off the ringer and the vibrate function and turn on Do-Not-Disturb.

When they arrive in Providence, he gets out of his seat and off the train and into a taxi as fast as he possibly can. He can’t really afford the taxi, but it’s (a) faster and (b) less public than the bus he normally takes when Jack can’t pick him up from the station, and he’s not at all sure he could keep it together for the length of the bus ride.

He cries silently in the taxi, looking out at the passing streets through a film of tears and feeling stupid, stupid, _stupid_. He pays the driver, lets himself in the front door of Jack’s building with the key no one at the Haus knows he has; cries quietly in the elevator up to Jack’s floor, lets himself into Jack’s apartment, shuts and locks the door behind him, and slides down the living-room wall to cry for real.

Eric knows he’s being loud and ridiculous. He tries to stop down the horrible gulping sobs, but the only result is that it gets harder to breathe. He knows what that anvil-on-his-chest feeling means: it’s been a while, but panic attacks aren’t something you forget. Funny, he’s helped Jack through half a dozen episodes (most of them pretty minor) since they got together, but he’s never told Jack how he knew what to do without being told.

Perversely, thinking of Jack helps: if this were Jack, curled up tight on the area rug fighting for breath, Eric would help him by sitting nearby but not necessarily touching; by taking Jack’s hand and spreading it on his own chest, so Jack could feel his heart beating; by counting breaths with Jack, by keeping him grounded and reassuring him that he was going to be okay. And if he can help Jack, then he can help himself, right? Surely to goodness.

So Eric opens his eyes and counts five things he can see: brown leather sofas. dark slate-gray walls. two whiteboards, one with hockey plays scribbled on it. four pool cues hanging up beside them. the knife-sharpener masquerading as a stainless-steel bunny figurine that Jack bought him as a joke but he secretly loves. He counts and tries to breathe, _in-two-three-four hold-two-three-four out-two-three-four_. He closes his eyes again and counts four things he can hear: faint traffic noise from down in the street. the low hum of Jack’s fridge. _tick-tock-tick-tock,_ the clock on the dining-room wall; his fingernails on the fabric of his jeans, _scritch-scritch-scritch._

He does not have _time_ for this. Jack will be coming home after morning skate, and Eric can’t be a pathetic puddle of anxiety-goo on the floor when he gets here. Jack has a game tonight, and Jack has a routine, and Eric needs to have his bag unpacked and his toothbrush beside the bathroom sink and Jack’s pre-game PB &J (with encouraging note) wrapped and ready to go on the counter before Jack arrives, needs to get lunch on the table so they can eat on schedule before Jack’s game-day afternoon nap.

So Eric pushes himself shakily to his feet, drags his overnight bag into Jack’s bedroom, unpacks his clothes and his Anthropology homework and his French flashcards; blows his nose and sets his toothbrush and his toiletries bag out beside Jack’s in the bathroom; washes his face and tries to do something about his hair. Back in the kitchen, he unpacks the loaf of whole-grain honey bread he baked yesterday, gets the organic nothing-but-peanuts peanut butter out of the cupboard and the jam (they’re using apricot this month) out of the fridge. He loses himself in the familiar mindless motions of sandwich-making—scolds himself for his lack of focus; this isn’t just a sandwich, this is a _game-day sandwich for Jack Zimmermann!_ —retrieves the pad of post-it notes from the pocket of his bag and peels off the top one, on which, early this morning, he wrote:

_You make me so proud! :) -B_

and draws a heart and most of a flower on it, just because. Sticks it carefully on the neatly wrapped PB&J, tucks it into Jack’s Falconers-blue cooler bag. Puts the knife and spoon and cutting-board into the dishwasher, goes back into the fridge to see what could be for lunch.

And none of it does him any good at all, because Jack walks in the door, calls, “Bits? Is everything OK? Lardo texted me and—”

He comes into view of the kitchen, takes one look at Eric (turning away from the sink with his best smile on), and says, in a tone of horror, “Bitty!”

His bag drops to the floor with a dull _thump_ and he’s striding toward Eric, so freaked out that he goes straight to French: “ Éric, osti de Crisse, t’as mal? C’qui c’passe?”

“English, Jack,” Eric says, or tries to. The words come out weirdly slanted, his voice cracking, breaking.

_I can’t do this. Lord help me, I can’t do this._

He’s folded tight in Jack’s arms before he knows it, and he feels so relieved and at the same time so disappointed in himself—this is exactly, precisely, 100% what he _didn’t_ want to happen when Jack came home!—that he doesn’t know what to do with it all.

And so, of course: word vomit. “I’m so sorry, Jack, I can’t do this, I can’t, I thought I could but it’s so much harder than I thought it would be, and—”

“Bitty?” Jack’s voice is soft, a little unsteady, and Eric’s head jerks up, instantly on Full Jack Zimmermann Alert. “Bits, are you … are we breaking up?”

“Jack!” Eric gets his hands flat on Jack’s chest, pushes back to look up at him. “Jack, _no_ , of course not!”

Jack’s face does something complicated on its way from woebegone to hugely relieved, and guilt washes over Eric and threatens to knock him flat.

“I love you,” he says, looking up into Jack’s ridiculous big blue eyes. “I love you _so much_ , Jack Zimmermann. You are the _best_ _boyfriend_. I just...”

He lets himself fall forward against Jack, slides his arms around Jack’s middle, breathes him in: soap and shampoo and Old Spice deodorant and a little bit of sweat from climbing the four flights of stairs from the parking garage (because Jack Zimmermann still works harder than God) and just … Jack.

“Love you too, Bits,” says Jack, into Eric’s hair. “Pauvre p’tit minou, t’es ben magané, hein? Come sit on the couch with me?”

They settle on the couch, Jack sitting at one end and Eric curled up with his head in Jack’s lap and Jack’s fingers carding through his hair. They’ve sat like this before, but in reverse, when Jack’s feeling anxious, and Eric’s heart swells with love for this boy who knows exactly what he needs and doesn’t hesitate to provide it, whether it’s chirps or checking practice or cuddles on the couch.

“Bits,” Jack says. Quiet, gentle. “Mon coco, p’tit lapinou.” Eric wonders idly what the words mean, then decides he doesn’t care because what they _really_ mean is _I love you._ “Whatever you’re feeling, it’s okay, you know? You’re allowed to have feelings, Bits. You’re allowed to … it’s okay to have a hard time with things. I know this is hard. Being apart so much. Keeping secrets. It _is_ hard, you don’t … you don’t have to pretend it’s not.”

Eric blinks back tears. “But I can’t—you need—”

Jack’s thumb gently traces Eric’s cheekbone, and Eric forgets what he was going to say. He must look like such a mess, good Lord, and yet Jack’s still right here, still looking down at him with those big blue eyes overflowing with worry and understanding and _love_. “Bits, I’m not more important than you. My feelings aren’t more important than yours. If I made you think that, I’m sor—”

“Don’t you apologize, Jack Zimmermann,” Eric says. He sniffles embarrassingly (because after all the crying he’s done today, it’s that or something worse) and holds Jack’s gaze and tells him the absolute 100% truth: “This isn’t your fault. I was a hot mess long before I ever met you, I was just real well trained to hide it.”

Jack’s eyes close, his mouth folds down at the corners, and that’s all Eric has time to see before he’s pulled up into Jack’s arms again. He burrows in, closer to contented than he’s been in he doesn’t know how long, with Jack’s heart beating strong and steady in one ear and Jack’s voice in the other. “You’re not a mess, ma chouette. You’re not. You’re so strong, Bits, you love me so hard, you play hockey with guys twice your size, you take care of everybody but nobody’s taking care of you, are they?”

Eric sniffles some more, trying not to get snot all over Jack’s t-shirt. “They’re trying,” he says. “I can’t let them. In case—in case I say something I shouldn’t.” Then he realizes how this sounds and adds, “ _You_ take care of me, Jack. You’re taking care of me right now.”

“But that’s not enough,” says Jack; and, over Eric’s protests, “I mean, _one person_ isn’t enough. Any one person. You taught me that, Bits—that we were a better team when we all looked out for each other, and being a better team player made me a better captain. You need … _we_ need more people on our team.”

And that’s …

That’s exactly what Eric does need, and he knows it. He just hasn’t put it in quite those terms before.

“Listen, Bits. I’ve been, um.” Jack pauses; Eric waits. “I’ve been thinking about. About … coming out.”

“Jack...!”

“At least to the guys on the team,” Jack says. “And, um. To our— _your_ team. Because this is so hard, Bits, and … I think it’s harder for you? I mean, for me, at least George knows, and my parents? I mean I don’t talk about you to George, obviously, but at least … well.”

“Does that,” says Bitty, momentarily distracted, “does that mean you _do_ talk about me to your parents?”

“Bittle,” says Jack, almost reproachful. “I talk about you to my parents _all the time_.”

And, _Oh_ , Eric thinks. _This boy._

“Anyway.” Jack squares his shoulders. “You should have someone to talk to, too. Someone you don’t have to hide from. And I wish it could be your parents, but if it can’t...”

“Jack, you don’t have to do this for me. I don’t want you to feel like you have to take such a big risk just because I can’t handle—”

“I’m not doing it for you.” Jack interrupts him, which is rude, but makes up for it with a little apologetic grimace and a gentle hand ruffling his hair. “I mean, I’m not _not_ doing it for you? But really I’m doing it for me. Like … it’s not fair to make you hide me, us, from your best friends. And I hate having to hide you from my team, because how can we have each other’s backs if they don’t know this big important thing about me? And...”

This is already a pretty long speech for Jack, especially on a feelings-adjacent topic, so Eric isn’t surprised when he trails off at this point, looking bashful and a bit confused.

When the silence has gotten too long to be just a pause for breath, Eric prompts, very gently, “And what, sweetheart?”

“… and I’m proud of you,” Jack says. “I’m so proud of you, and I’m. I’m _so happy_ to be … to be _with_ you. I keep having to stop myself from talking about you, and I _hate_ it.”

There’s a surprising—and gratifying—amount of passion in the way he says those words.

“My sentiments exactly, Mr. Zimmermann,” says Eric.

Jack smiles, and Eric just has to kiss him.

*

Eric’s too tired to want to eat lunch, let alone cook it, so Jack reheats lasagna from the freezer and they eat curled up together on the couch.

Eric tries to apologize, again, for messing with Jack’s routine; Jack gives him the Captain Jack Zimmermann “I Am 110% Serious About This” Look and says, “Next time there’s something you don’t think you should bother me with, _bother me with it_.”

“Okay,” Eric says meekly.

“Promise me, Bits.” This time it’s not Captain Jack, it’s Boyfriend Jack, and the earnest expression on his face makes Eric want to kiss him again—kiss him and kiss him and never, ever stop.

Instead he says, “I promise.”

“Thank you,” says Jack, seriously. “And, um. I promise, too.”

And Eric feels the weight of this moment—this serious, grown-up, very unsexy conversation, these deceptively simple promises given and received—but it doesn’t feel like shouldering a burden; it feels like laying one down.

*

Then it’s time (past time) for Jack’s game-day nap, so they head into Jack’s bedroom and strip down to t-shirts and boxer briefs, because otherwise they’ll overheat, and Eric lets Jack be the big spoon and falls asleep to the sound of an incomprehensible and extremely repetitive lullaby in French.

*

The Falconers play the Seattle Schooners, and Eric watches from a safely unspectacular seat. The Schooners play hard, but the Falcs play harder, and Jack plays hardest of all, scoring in the first, getting the go-ahead goal in the second, and making it a hat trick in the last five minutes of the third. Eric wishes he’d worn a hat so he could have thrown it—but he never does, because it always seems like tempting fate.

He shouts ZIM-MER-MANN with the rest of the Providence crowd, though, until his voice is hoarse and his ears are ringing.

After the game, he waits for Jack to be done doing press (and wonders how many times he’ll be asked if he has Valentine’s Day plans, and what answers he’ll give instead of the truth) and by the time Jack catches up with him in the mostly-deserted concourse he’s fizzing with nerves again, because is Jack going to go through with it? What if he doesn’t?

Oh, Lord, what if he _does?_

Jack’s with a couple of his teammates, Martin and Mashkov (Eric has to remind himself that they’re not _his_ teammates so he probably shouldn’t call them Marty and Tater like Jack does), and Eric half expects him to act the way he normally would—maybe give him a fist bump and a grin, maybe say _Hey, you remember my friend Bittle, he was my liney at Samwell?_ —but instead he catches Eric’s gaze, a look in his eyes like he’s bound and determined to block a shot with his face again, good _Lord_ , and when Eric smiles back in encouragement (because honestly he’s helpless against the hurricane that is Jack Zimmermann with a Plan) his face lights up and he says, “Bits! Bits, did you see? I got you a hatty for Valentine’s Day!” and holds out his arms like he expects Eric to leap into them.

And Eric … well, Eric does. Of course he does.

“Is this okay?” Jack whispers into Eric’s neck.

“This is wonderful, honey,” Eric says, honestly. He pulls back a little, searching Jack’s face for objections, then leans in for a quick peck on the lips—there are limits to acceptable PDA, after all.

He startles when a massive hand claps him on the back and a massive voice booms, “Get it, Zimmboni!”

Eric looks at Jack, and Jack looks at Eric, and they both burst out laughing; Jack laughs so hard that he loses his grip on Eric, and Eric just barely manages to get his feet under him before he’s unceremoniously dropped.

There’s a pause, and then Mashkov says, in what’s obviously meant to be a discreet whisper, “Is what you say, Marty, yes?”

“Well, it’s not what you say in _public_ ,” says Martin, rolling his eyes.

“Not saying in public in Russia,” says Mashkov, “because Russia is not … friendly. But in America—”

“In America we have _manners_ , Mr. Mashkov,” says Eric, with mock severity—he couldn’t manage real severity even if he wanted to, because he just _kissed Jack_ in front of _two NHL players_ and instead of anything bad happening, they’re … chirping each other? “We don’t talk about other people’s … _private business_ in public.”

This, unfortunately, just makes all three of them laugh at him. Which … fair, he supposes, given that there’s an entire television genre consisting entirely of people over-sharing their private lives.

“Grouille-toé, mon gars,” says Martin, clapping Jack on the shoulder; and to Eric, “Have fun, eh?”

Eric, blushing furiously because he has no idea what Martin just said to Jack, says, “G’night, Mr Martin. G’night, Mr Ta—Mr Mashkov.”

“Zimmboni!” Mashkov calls after them. “Your boyfriend so good cook—so when I’m coming over?”

Jack laughs so hard that tears leak out the corners of his eyes.

*

They both should be exhausted—especially Jack, who played a lot of very tiring hockey tonight and has bruises on some of his bruises—but instead they’re wired, fizzing with … well, it’s still nerves, Eric decides, just good ones rather than the other kind.

They talked, this afternoon, about what they might do, who they might tell first; Jack obviously picked his trial balloon well, judging by their reactions, and Eric’s pretty confident that Lardo and Shitty are safe people to tell. Well, Lardo, anyway; he’s been a bit less impressed with Shitty after his outburst at that kegster in the fall, even though he knows Jack and Shitty have since talked about his behavior and Shitty’s apologized. (Shitty hasn’t apologized to Eric, but that’s not exactly his fault, since he has no way of knowing it’s any of Eric’s business. It’s not fair for Eric to still be annoyed with him, but—life’s not fair sometimes.)

“You still want to do this now, Bits?” Jack says, when they’re back in his apartment and in each other’s arms on the couch. “Because we can, um. We can do something else tonight, and call Shits and Lardo in the morning.”

Eric scoffs. “Yeah, that’ll go well. They’ll think we’re waking ‘em up on purpose for, like, some kind of prank. No, I think now’s better.”

 _Before I lose my nerve,_ he doesn’t say. The giant pink elephant still in the room is the question of when and what he’s going to tell his parents.

Jack sets up his laptop on the dining-room table (Eric experiences one of those weird moments of disorientation at the thought that he is dating someone who _owns his own dining-room set_ ) and opens up Skype, but neither Shitty nor Lardo seems to be online. Jack texts them both: _Are you guys busy rn? Can you skype? I need to talk to you._

His phone buzzes immediately with what turns out to be a reply from Lardo: _Jack! have u heard from bitty yet? hes not answering his phone_

“Oh, for—! Dang it, I never took my phone off of do-not-disturb.” Eric digs the phone out of his pocket, and sure enough, there are five missed calls and several dozen increasingly anxious texts from Lardo, Holster, Ransom, and Shitty, as well as a couple of texts from Jack, sent during the interval between the end of morning skate and the time he arrived home afterwards.

Jack is texting again. “I’m telling Lards you’re fine and you’re with me,” he says, not looking up.

“Tell her I’m sorry,” Eric says. “I honestly didn’t mean—”

 _Boop-be-boop!_ goes Jack’s laptop. _Boop-be-boop-doop_ —

The Skype tone cuts off as Jack picks up the call, and when Eric peers over his shoulder he sees Lardo and Shitty jockeying for position in front of a webcam in an unfamiliar room. He pulls out the chair next to the one Jack’s parked himself in, and sits down in it.

“Bitty, thank fuck!” is the first thing Shitty says. “Lardo was convinced you’d done a Gone Girl.”

“I am so sorry, Lardo,” says Eric, over Jack’s baffled _Done a what?_. “I just plain forgot to turn my ringer back on—”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” she says. “But if you ever disappear on us like that again, I _will_ hunt you down and murder you.”

Eric gives her a grateful smile.

Lardo shifts her slightly pixellated gaze from him to Jack. “So,” she says. “Talk.”

Jack looks at Eric; Eric looks back. Out of camera range, Jack’s hand finds Eric’s and squeezes tight; Eric squeezes back. _I’ve got your back, sweetheart._

“So, I said I didn’t have a girlfriend?” Jack begins.

Even over the sketchy Skype connection Eric can see questions and exclamations boiling up in Shitty’s face and body language, but he has the sense to keep his mouth shut and wait for Jack to go on.

“It’s true. No girlfriend. But, um.”

And words aren’t really Jack’s _thing_ , are they, so Eric shouldn’t be surprised when instead of explaining, Jack just lifts their clasped hands, fingers intertwined, up above the tabletop.

There’s a long, stunned silence, and then Shitty _explodes_.

For the first minute or so it’s basically just incoherent swearing, interspersed with their names and the occasional sniffle. Then Lardo punches him in the biceps, pretty hard by the looks of it, and he gets himself together enough to say, “But why didn’t you _say_ something?”

“We’re saying something now,” Eric says, in a tone of voice which he hopes conveys the message that this isn’t up for discussion.

And Shitty gets it, or at least he doesn’t press the point right now. Instead he demands, “How long has this been going on?!”

Eric and Jack look at each other. “Since graduation,” Jack admits, sounding a little sheepish.

“More or less,” says Eric. Because, on the one hand, it wasn’t until weeks later that he said to Jack, _So, are we … are we dating? Or what?_ and Jack made his confused face and said, _We’re boyfriends? I thought? Is that not—_ and Eric grinned so hard he thought his face might split and said, _I am so down with that, Jack Zimmermann._ And, on the other hand, they’d been falling towards that Graduation Day kiss for a long, long time before it happened.

Shitty looks gobsmacked. Lardo, though …

“Oh, Bits,” she says. “No wonder.”

Eric looks away, ashamed of himself all over again for making everyone worry.

“Bits,” Jack murmurs, and reels him in with a big strong arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay.”

 _Honestly, this boy_.

*

Eric sticks around for Jack’s regular Sunday Skype call with his parents, both of whom (after congratulating Jack again on last night’s game, and Eric on how nice Jack looked in the suit Eric picked out for him) comment on how happy and relaxed they look.

“We, um,” says Jack, blushing adorably. “We told some people last night. About us? And it went really well.”

Eric’s spent enough time talking to Jack’s parents, over the last nine months, that he can tell how hard they’re struggling between _happy for Jack_ and _worried that this is going to be too much for Jack_. He appreciates that they let happy win out over worried, at least out loud; what he appreciates slightly less is Alicia’s excited squeal of “Eric! Does this mean we can finally stop walking on eggshells around your mother?”

“Um,” he says, and looks down and away from the laptop screen, fiddling with the placket of his shirt.

“Eric, chéri,” Alicia says. “Can I tell you a deep dark secret?”

“Should I leave?” says Jack. Eric can’t tell if he’s joking, but grabs his hand just in case and holds on tight.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and forces himself to stop being rude and look at Alicia.

“Your mother,” she says very seriously, “and I mean it, you did _not_ hear this from me, loves you very, very much and is very worried about you because, and I quote, she’s sure there’s something you’re not telling her and she’s afraid she knows what it is—” Eric’s heart sinks, but Alicia continues, “—and it breaks her heart that you’d think there’s anything, _anything at all_ , that you’d be afraid to tell her about.”

“You say that,” says Eric, miserably, “but you don’t know small-town Georgia.”

 “She read that interview with Jack where he talked about living with an anxiety disorder, Eric,” Bad Bob puts in. He can be surprisingly gentle and quiet, for a hockey legend. “She asked us for advice, because she thought you might need help and was afraid you’d never ask for it. No, don’t make that face—”

Eric realizes he’s letting his guilty conscience show, and turns his face into Jack’s warm flannel-covered chest. Jack’s arm tightens around him, and he feels the vibrations when Jack speaks: “Papa, tais-toé une p’tite minute, hein? Tu vas l’faire pleurer encore. Dis-moé donc, maman veut dire quoi avec tout ça?”

“A veut dire qu’y s’inquiète pour rien,” says Bad Bob, and, oh dear, he doesn’t sound either gentle or quiet now. “Qu’y fait paniquer ses pauvres parents et qu’iIs vont l’adorer n’importe quoi.” There’s a pause; then he goes on, a little less vehemently, “On savait pas qu’y souffrait d’même que toé.”

He’s talking much too fast for Eric to follow, but it seems to have been about Eric, and whatever it is makes Jack’s muscles tense. Jack’s answer is low and bitten-out: “Moé j’l’savais pas non plus.”

Eric pushes off from Jack’s ribcage and sits up straight. “Y’all need to stop now,” he says, forcing himself to look right at Bad Bob. “I’m sorry, but you’re upsetting Jack, and also, I don’t like bein’ talked about behind my back when I’m sittin’ right here.”

Bad Bob looks chagrined; Alicia looks … actually sort of smug. She offers Eric a fist-bump through the webcam, which makes him chuckle, which makes her smile.

Then she goes serious again. “Eric, sweetheart,” she says, “I’m not gonna tell you what to do. Just … one mom to another? I know how she’s feeling right now, and how she feels is worried about her baby, and wanting to help, and scared of saying or doing something that’ll make things worse.”

She glances aside at Jack—just long enough to remind Eric that she, too, was once the long-distance parent of an anxious, miserable, closeted son who was hiding big chunks of his life from her, _and look how that turned out._

Eric wants to argue— _I’m not abusing my anxiety meds_ , he wants to say, _I’m not suicidal, Jack’s not Kent Parson, I’m not eighteen and looking down the barrel of the NHL draft, this isn’t the same at all_ —but he knows what Alicia’s really saying, and he wants so much to believe she’s right _._

“Okay,” he hears himself say. “Okay.”

*

“I have no idea what you and maman just agreed to,” Jack complains, over lunch at the kitchen counter.

“I agreed to talk to my mama, that’s all,” says Eric, like it’s not the big fucking deal they both know it definitely is. “Apparently she thinks I’m, like, in a real bad way, and she don’t want a repeat of eighth grade. Like I’d ever do _that_ again, no matter how bad it got.”

He registers too late that Jack has gone very, very still beside him. “Do what again?” Jack asks.

 _You literally just promised to tell each other stuff_ , Eric reminds himself. “Um,” he says. “I … kinda ran away from home. And, um, tried to hitchhike to New York City?”

Jack drops his fork. “Bits, that’s like fourteen hundred kilometres!”

Eric scowls. “I was _thirteen_ ,” he says. “And stupid, and desperate. Y’all talk about gettin’ locked in the utility closet like it was a one-time thing, but—”

Jack’s bear-hug catches him off guard and practically knocks him off his bar-stool.

“I hate that those things happened to you,” Jack says, his voice muffled in Eric’s shoulder where he’s buried his nose. “I hate that people were assholes to you, and I hate that I can’t go back in time and protect you, and I hate that _I_ was an asshole to you because I didn’t understand—anything—and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you ever again.”

“Jack, sweetheart.” Eric hugs Jack back as hard as he can from this awkward angle. “Bad stuff happens sometimes, okay? Nobody can guarantee it won’t, and it’s not on you if someone else is a dick to me. It’s _certainly_ not on you that some plug-ugly running backs on a junior high football team in Georgia were homophobic douchecanoes almost a decade ago, good Lord!”

“I know,” Jack concedes, grudgingly. He nuzzles his face against Eric’s neck; it tickles, and Eric squirms. “I just. Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people. And you’re the _best_ person.”

“Jack Zimmermann.” Eric manages to choke the words out past the sudden lump in his throat, but only just. “Don’t you go makin’ me into something I’m not. Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people—and that includes you, mister—but they do, and that’s that. We just gotta have each other’s backs when they do, that’s all.”

He wriggles out of Jack’s embrace, slides down to the floor, and looks up at Jack, holding out his fist. “Deal?”

Jack’s eyes are a little red (and so’s his face), but he smiles down at Eric and gently bumps his fist. “Deal,” he says.

“Okay,” says Eric. “Now, finish your lunch, Mister Zimmermann, because I got a phone call to make to Georgia.”

“We,” says Jack. “ _We_ have a phone call to make.”

Eric swallows hard.

“It’s gonna be okay, Bits,” Jack says.

*

They make the call half an hour later, and—to Eric’s astonishment—it really, really is.

**Author's Note:**

> In the original version, various teammates tried to get Bitty to talk about what was bothering him, without much success. Chowder interrupted him in the middle of aggressively baking sugar cookies, and Bitty successfully distracted him by letting him choose what animal shape the cookies should be (he thought he had a shark cookie cutter, but, to Chowder's disappointment, it turned out to be a dolphin). Chowder picked hedgehogs. The Cloud ate that scene, but here are Bitty's animal cookie cutters: <http://www.fancyflours.com/category/Animal-cookie-cutters/a>
> 
> And here's the article Bitty reads where Patrick Burke says the NHL is ready for some players to come out: <http://www.tsn.ca/patrick-burke-nhl-is-ready-for-a-gay-player-1.388059>
> 
> I swear I saw a floor plan of Jack's apartment somewhere, but now I can't find it, so I'm basing this on what I can see and/or guess from comic 3.6 ("PB&J"). Bitty's post-it note is one of those we see on Jack's fridge in the "notes on comic 3.6" post. 
> 
> _Éric, osti de Crisse, t'as mal? C'qui c'passe?_ — > Eric, [Anglo expletive of your choice], are you hurt? What's going on? ("are you hurt?" here isn't specifically physical; it could also be, like, "are you feeling bad?") 
> 
> _P'tit minou, mon coco, p'tit lapinou, ma chouette_ — > little kitten, my chicken, little bunny, my owl (Québécois swear words are wacky; Québécois love words can be a bit wacky too) 
> 
> _T'es ben magané, hein?_ \-- > You're all tuckered out, eh? 
> 
> _Grouille-toé, mon gars_ \-- > Get a move on, buddy 
> 
> _Papa, tais-toé une p'tite minute, hein? Tu vas l'faire pleurer encore. Dis-moi donc, maman veut dire quoi avec tout ça?_ \-- > Papa, shut for a sec, eh? You're gonna make him cry again. Just tell me, where's Maman going with this? 
> 
> _A veut dire qu'y s'inquiète pour rien. Qu'y fait paniquer ses pauvres parents et qu'iIs vont l'adorer n'importe quoi._ \-- > She's saying he's worrying for nothing. That he's freaking out his parents, and that they'll adore him no matter what. 
> 
> _On savait pas qu'y souffrait d'même que toé._ \-- > We didn't know that Eric has the same trouble as you. [Here Bad Bob is trying to say "we didn't know Eric also has an anxiety disorder" without actually saying the words "Eric" or "anxiety disorder", not because he's afraid of saying this to Jack but because even Bitty is likely to correctly parse the combination of _Éric_ and _anxiété_.] 
> 
> _Moé j'l'savais pas non plus._ \-- > I didn't know either. 
> 
> The lullaby Jack sings Bitty (which I don't think is technically a lullaby, but when my daughter was little I discovered it is BEST LULLABY because it is SO BORING) is "A la claire fontaine". Fun fact: this song has only four notes in it (do, re, mi, and sol) but goes on forever. I've posted a kinda crappy recording of it [here](https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjDt6Iz_WMZinmQPlmuSFrbHRnbr) (recorded on my phone in a hotel room, so yeah). The songs I imagine Bitty singing to Jack are things like "Coffee Grows on White Oak Trees" and "Mama's Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird", but I don't know the music of the US South the way I know Canadian folk music...


End file.
